“It’s okay. Take your time,” my mother coaxed. “You’ve been out of it since yesterday morning.”
Hearing that I’d only lost a day helped a little, but it wasn’t enough. I still couldn’t remember what happened or why. All I had to go on was how much it hurt.
So much, I wondered how I was still alive.
“You were attacked,” Mom finally told me. I looked into her brown eyes and saw the tear that fell. “Someone found you and brought you here.”
Those words immediately sparked a memory.
A flash of white hair, a bat, the smiling face of a stranger, and a name I knew but couldn’t recall.
I tried to sit up.
Fuck. Too fast.
It felt like my brain was pushing against my broken skull. I cried out in pain before lying back down.
“Braxton, you have to take it easy,” my mother scolded. “You almost died.” When my eyes slowly opened once more, I took in my mother in her Sunday finest. “I almost lost you.”
It sounded like a plea to not scare her again, and I paused.
She actually cared?
It was a cruel thought, but a true one. I honestly didn’t believe she would.
“I’m…sorry.”
It was the best I could do so soon after gaining consciousness.
I also couldn’t think of a response that wouldn’t hurt her the way she’d hurt me or disappoint her, as I’d done countless times before.
Amelia and I weren’t just different.
We were opposing ends of an unbreakable spectrum.
Neither of us would budge.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said as she rearranged the bouquet on my bedside table. It was an excuse not to meet my eyes. “But you are my daughter, Braxton.”
Just not the one you wanted.
I couldn’t even nod without hurting my head, so I gave no reaction at all.
“You were too young to remember, but these were your favorite,” she casually informed me. I watched her toy with the short, purple petals on the long stems. “We took you to so many doctors, heard so many opinions. No one could figure out what was wrong. Phantosmia was the best diagnosis they could give, but they couldn’t figure out what was causing the symptom. We tried therapy, and they swore it was just a phase you’d grow out of someday, but you never did. We spent most of your childhood afraid we’d lose you, and we wouldn’t know why.” She looked at me briefly before she started to rearrange the stems again. “We’re still afraid.”
It was on my lips to tell her that she had no reason to be, but she kept talking, and I…I wanted to listen. Call me needy or vain, but I wanted to hear more of my mother as she admitted that she cared for me and always had despite our differences.
“It wore on you too,” she told me. “You were always so frustrated, so confused. You stopped eating and couldn’t bear to smell anything, real or imagined, pleasant or bad. Sometimes you’d cry, and sometimes you’d get angry. There were even times your blood pressure would skyrocket until you passed out.” She took a deep breath before shaking her head and started rearranging those stems again. There were at least thirty more bouquets in the room, but she was focused on this one. “And then, one day, you vanished. We searched for hours, but you were simply gone. After a while, you gave us no choice but to think you ran away, harmed yourself, or worse…someone had taken you.” Bringing one of the stems up, she sniffed the petals and smiled. “It was another day before we found you.” She turned to me with an admonishing look. “You were sleeping in a field not far away as if nothing were amiss.” She looked at the bouquet again. “A field full of these.”
My eyebrows rose because I didn’t remember that.
At all.
“You looked so still after so many restless nights that for a moment, I thought…” She loudly sighed when she struggled to find the words. “I thought you were dead, Braxton.”
I winced at the weariness in her voice even now.
“We took you home,” she continued. “But the next day, it started all over again—the crying and the fits. Whenever you were overwhelmed, afraid, confused, or hurting, you ran to that field. Even during the rare times that you were happy, you still went back. You always found a reason because you were never truly at peace unless surrounded by these. Sometimes we’d find you sleeping again. Other times you’d be singing, crying, dancing, or laughing for no reason at all. Your father didn’t understand. He got so fed up that he threatened to send it up in flames. The last time he dragged you out of there, you begged and promised not to go back, but his mind was made up.” She hesitated to tell me what I already knew. “He destroyed it.”